John Goodman

Charity Without the Welfare State

Charity Without the Welfare State

We can have a safety net that meets the needs of people who experience misfortune without creating a permanent class of nonworking dependents who behave in socially undesirable ways.

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What to Know About Pete Sessions’ Health Reform Bill

What to Know About Pete Sessions’ Health Reform Bill

With the help of scholars at the Goodman institute and Americans for Prosperity, Congressman Pete Sessions and his colleagues have introduced the Health Care Fairness for All Act. Among its other features, the bill would do the following: 1. For the first time in the...

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Update: The Durham Report

Update: The Durham Report

Why are the mainstream media outlets so intent on convincing us there is no there, there?

Maybe it’s because the report invites us to review not just the behavior of the FBI and the intelligence community during the Trump presidency, but also the behavior of the media during all that time.

Here is a brief review of all the times Donald Trump was called a “traitor” on the editorial pages of the New York Times and elsewhere.  This was not just schoolyard name calling. In column after column, writers encouraged readers to believe that Trump might actually be the agent of a foreign power.

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Why Are There Drug Shortages?

Why Are There Drug Shortages?

For the past two decades the US has been experiencing shortages of cancer drugs, antibiotics and even saline, a drug potentially needed by almost every patient who gets admitted to the hospital. Nearly all thirty of the most frequently used emergency department drugs experienced shortages from 2006-2019.

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Social Security and Medicare Reform

Social Security and Medicare Reform

To avert financial disaster for our children and grandchildren we need to reform these elderly entitlement programs. Yet reform efforts are easily demagogued by opponents unless they contain real benefits for the current generation of retirees. More.

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How Much Do We Owe?

How Much Do We Owe?

Under current law we have already promised current and future retirees unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits amounting to $163 trillion in current dollars. That is almost seven times the size of our economy. And of course, all this is “off the table.”  More

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What Congressional Republicans are Getting Wrong

What Congressional Republicans are Getting Wrong

When John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, he won the majority of white voters who didn’t have a college degree. But he lost white college graduates by a two-to-one margin. The numbers were almost exactly reversed for Joe Biden.

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Why Are Politicians Ignoring the Elderly

Why Are Politicians Ignoring the Elderly

According to Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell, 3.5 million workers have permanently departed from the workforce. Of that number, 2 million have retired. Can’t retirees change their mind, and at least take a part-time job? In principle, yes. But the federal government does its mighty best to discourage them from doing that. More

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